Have a Relaxing Weekend.

The article about fire is fascinating!!! My family moved to Germany a few months ago. While touring Kindergartens (German pre-schools), one proudly pointed out the “fire play” station in a room for 3-5 year olds. I tried my best not to allow my shocked reaction to register on my face as the tour continued as if this was the most normal activity in the world for 3 year olds to perform at pre-school, and internally wondered about the actual practice of children playing with fire at school and what that looked like. In the next room, my questions were answered when I saw a little boy who looked to be roughly 4 years old sitting at this room’s fire station and safely lighting matches under supervision! I went home and laughed incredulously about it with my husband. However, I’ve noticed a number of German homes (including ours) have wood-fired stoves that assist in heating in the winter, so after that visit, we began allowing our 5 & 7 year old boys to assist in starting the fire. I keep the matches in a single common area of the house (kitchen cabinet) where they cannot be played with in secret and we have a firm rule that matches can only be used if Mommy & Daddy are present, but if there is anything to be lit (candle, fireplace) then I let the kids help and they do great!!

My boyfriend says I smell like dill pickles when I wear that perfume. :(

Thank you for sharing “The Jobs Americans Do”. The last essay in the piece was written by Carlo Rotella, a professor of mine at Boston College. He taught the best class I have ever taken, a dual Film/ English elective in which we studied “urbanness” by analyzing cities and the people that live in them. He is a smart man and an incredible professor, and he really cares about the things he writes about and works on. I am excited to see his work featured here.

People can’t tell if an avocado is ripe without the sticker?? How about bananas? Seems easy enough to me! Greener = less ripe. : )

I bought the large size of Santal 33 after seeing EVERYONE talking about it online and was shocked when I tried it (for the first time) and thought it smelled like celery & pickles! Wondering if I got a bad bottle! It’s awful!

Hope you had a great time at dinner!! I’ve been taking advantage of the amazing weather this weekend and went to the Brooklyn Bridge to shoot some photos for the blog. I love when the weather gets warm like this and NYC takes on a new level of energy!! xx yael

http://www.yaelsteren.com/blog/

Thank you for the links!
I really love the interview piece too.

our swimming school did a wet washcloth trick. They’d put a wet wash clothe in the kid’s face. Then the kid would put their face into the teachers hands with wet washcloth in them. Then the teacher would keep making the wash cloth wetter and brining it lower toward the water until the wash cloth touched the water and the teacher would remove their hands and the kid’s face would essentially be in the water.
I was looking up where isodi is and made me think – why don’t they list the borough in the address? For ppl that are not familiar with New Yorker – it’s so hard to know where the places are!

In Brazil, brocolli is a common topping on pizzas. There brocoli with garlic and olive oil, and brocoli with catupiry (a type of cream cheese). It’s so good!

I need to know what book sophie was reading!

That interview format is SO fun!!!

Cup of Jo is obsessed with cacio e pepe! I feel like it’s mentioned at least once per month on the blog haha

Making up for doing (literally) nothing last weekend by jam packing this one! Going to happy hour and the Pop Up Magazine event at the Ace Hotel tonight // hiking, photo shoot, and board game night with friends Saturday // shooting with a drone (hopefully!) and watching the Oscars Sunday. Oh, and my husband comes back from a work trip – good weekend indeed. :)
Also, can I just say I LOVE reading your readers’ comments (including those three you included from dining alone..so lovely)? <3
http://www.wonderlandsam.com

Uhhhh the avocado thing is genius.

http://objectsicantafford.com

Get the Tiramisu at I Sodi! The best.

My son had that problem too, he freaked out over even the slightest drop of water in his face…then his teacher had a quite funny approach to that: he would let the kids yell swearwords under water. They could not resist :)

My 5 year old nephew (who lives in Florida and has a lot of time in the pool) was loathe to get his face wet. A really well fitting mask (not little goggles, think scuba mask) got him to put his face in finally. Almost overnight he went from not swimming (because you can’t swim if your face ain’t in) to deciding the mask was OK and swimming like a fish. Maybe just ask him what he thinks might make it easier to put his face in and try to accommodate whatever it is that he suggests. Mask, towel at the edge of the pool for a little face drying action, ?

nooooo you didn’t give a spoiler alert warning re the bachelorette! I had been avoiding finding out :( sad day.

Ha…I actually did the 1986 cuff back in 1986. :-)
But those high-waisted mom jeans don’t look great even on the attractive woman from J. Crew…I can’t believe they are back!

I was terrified of going under water when I was Toby’s age. My mom pulled me out of group lessons, and asked a friend to give me private lessons in our neighborhood pool. She made me put my head underwater 10 times each lesson (no holding my nose!). I thought it was torture at first, but after a week or two, I was so proud of myself! I turned into a little fish after that. I think the 1:1 attention helped.

So funny! I picked up a sample of that perfume last week. :) I’m loving all these links. They’re inspiring so many thoughts and ideas. Thank you for sharing. xoxoxo

My daughter has been really scared to put her face in the water too. We’ve been practing at home in the bathtub with goggles she picked out. I think it’s working, last week she put her face in. :)